Pool Bubbles, Ho, Ho, 2023 Go!

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

12/30/23

 

Hou'oli Maka Hiki Hou! (Happy New Year!) ---

 

Our Christmas was quiet.  I turned on my Pandora Christmas Carol station and managed to last about 6 hours until the Silver Bells, Sleigh Bells, and Hosannas got to me.  As  I mentioned, Karen and I weren't going to give each other presents -- but two days before Christmas I had a stroke of inspiration as we were doing our usual Saturday morning rounds.  Mescal!!  Karen and I were introduced to this high-brow version of Tequila during our last visit to southern Mexico year before last, and we became quite fond of it -- especially Karen.  We brought back some with us but "we" (mostly Karen) drank it all months ago.  It's hard to find here in Hawai'i but one of our local grocery stores does carry it, and I was able to score a bottle on Saturday morning and surprise Karen with it for Christmas.  Good going, Dick!

 

Christmas day we went to a dinner hosted by a neighbor and good friend that we've attended for the last few years.  Very pleasant, with some interesting discussions with people we don't ordinarily interact with -- including a couple of professional musicians and also a couple of fellow travel-addicts.  The menu included both Turkey and Ham, the second of which love -- maybe too much.  Ham is something I've had a weakness for bordering on derangement for as long as I can remember.  As a kid my mother would serve

ham on the bone, like the kind in cartoons.  These hams predated the ones you can now buy pre-cooked and pre-sliced .  These had to be baked and then served with some of the meat sliced onto a platter.  My weakness was so strong that if there was left-over ham in the refrigerator, I would get up at night and eat a fair percentage of my body weight in the stuff.  Today, because of the salt and fat concerns of geezerhood, I have had to limit my intake so that my death certificate doesn't read "death by ham ingestion."   However, I might have exceeded the reasonable limit this year -- by just a smidge, I assure you.

On Thursday we played golf at Makalei.  It was a sunny, clear day for the most part, a definite contrast to last week's rain-out.  In fact, we played all 18 holes, a noteworthy feat for us. I did a solid "meh," but

Karen did great -- a par on one hole with a one-putt, and SIX consecutive Bogeys!!!  Obviously my "meh-ness" wasn't contagious.  At first we were puzzled because we didn't see hardly any Nenes or Peacocks, but as the day wore on they came out from the tree-lined margins and we wound up seeing about 20 Nenes and 20 Peacocks, including the white male Peacock who was displaying for some interested females.  We were pleased to get in this round and have it be a good one because it may have been our last until after we return from our trip.

 

My big techno-woe this week was fighting bubbles.  Bubbles in our pool, that is.  Somehow air is getting into the solar heating system and this means there is a problem to be solved somewhere.  I consulted with my pool service guy and I'm going to replace something called the vacuum breaker valve that is attached to the solar panels and is supposed to open only when the system is off, allowing air to enter the pipes so that water will drain back into the pool.  It may be that mine, which is now 18 or so years old, is allowing air all the time, thus creating the bubbles.  On the mainland finding a replacement would be fast and easy, I'm sure, but here the main supplier of parts for these systems doesn't stock the size I need.  Soooooo, the problem will persist until one that is ordered arrives.  While investigating the cause of the bubbles, I also found a couple of leaks in the roof panels themselves which I tried to fix yesterday myself.  Ah, home ownership!!  

On a philosophical note, I'd say 2023 was somewhat of a mixed bag.  It certainly had some up sides for me personally in terms of travel experiences, personal development, learning opportunities, and generally being in pretty good health.  However, the depth and breadth of problems around the world in terms of climate change, wars, ideological extremism, social antipathy, and a loss of anything resembling a moral center, leave me with a nagging feeling that humanity is heading in the wrong direction.  It also leads me to realize that I've lived in some very good times that may not recur in the near future.  So, as this year comes to a close I'm grateful for my past life and somewhat leery about what the next years might bring.  Nevertheless, I sincerely wish you a Happy, Healthy, and Fulfilling New Year.... 

 

Off we go one last time this year to the beach for our breakfast picnic.  Take care, stay warm!

'Twas the Week Before Christmas

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

12/23/23

 

Mele Kalikimaka!  ---

 

It's hard to believe that Christmas is just TWO days away!  I guess I'm ready, and I've been trying hard to get into the spirit of things -- we have lights up inside and outside, the tree is decorated and we've been lighting it each night during dinner and throughout the evening, our Christmas cards are mailed, we've been to several festive events and get-togethers with friends, etc.  I've noted that each year we send fewer cards, partly because this tradition has been fading universally, and partly because of the sad fact that fewer on our mailing list are still upright.  Also, we've taken to sending Season's Greetings by email, a convenient, cheap, but less expressive way of keeping in touch. 

On Sunday we attended a presentation by the Kona Choral Society of Handel's Messiah -- well, the part that focuses on the birth.  It was very well done and featured four soloists, three of whom were exceptionally good.  We know a couple of people in the chorus, including the wife of my old fraternity brother who lives here now.  In fact, we had a delightful dinner with them on Wednesday in their new house that replaces the coffee farm they sold this year.  On Monday we went to a holiday party hosted by the women's organization that Karen belongs to -- one of the fun things they did was to stick a famous name on each person's back and the person had to guess the name by asking any of the other attendees three yes/no questions.  I was Tom Cruise..... Last night we hosted dinner for two of our Ohio friends who are here on their yearly visit to their daughter, a teacher at a private school up north in Waimea.  They are now living in Wisconsin, and have shown the wisdom of their years by coming here during the winter.  It was a real treat to catch up with the three of them, and certainly appropriate to the season. Whew! I'm sure that this much socializing is routine for many people, but for us it is way more than normal.

 

Karen and I have decided to forgo personal gifts this year (except for her new Iphone), and instead we've designated a few items for both of us as Christmas presents -- a new kitchen scale, a portable carpet cleaner, and an electric blanket (!).  Jingle bells!

Early in the week we received our Kenya e-visas (we already have them for Ethiopia).  This eliminates one more obstacle to our trip.  Now all I need is for the Circuit Court Judge to let me out of being on the Grand Jury, something I won't find out until January 5th.  Cutting it a little close, I'd say.

On Wednesday Karen and I played nine holes of "aqua-golf" at Makalei.  It started out sunny, but by the

Where's the Hole?!

fourth hole it began misting, and by the seventh it was raining at a pretty good rate.  We slogged through the ninth hole and then aborted.  Too bad, because although I started off poorly, I was doing much better around the time it started to rain, including one bogey and some satisfyingly good shots.  After the rain started the peacocks ran for cover, but before that we saw quite a few, and also saw our first baby Nene of the season.  Cute little guy!  Actually, our Kona weather has been kind of sucky lately -- night temps have dropped to a frigid 62d and it has been cloudy and rainy parts of most days.  This resulted in a rare monthly electric bill that exceeded our maintenance charge because our pv panels just couldn't cover our usage. It was paid from our surplus credit, but it wiped out our reserves.  Because of the lack of sun and the cold nights, our pool temp has fallen below our wimpy geezer threshold, so we haven't been in for several days this past week.  Oh, the hardships of winter!!!!!

 

Our RSV vaccinations gave neither of us hardly any problems at all, much less than our Covid updates and flu shots. I had a *very* slight sore arm for about a day, but otherwise felt fine. It's a bit of a relief for me to have the extra protection, especially prior to an international trip.

 

Ok, we're off for our usual stop at Farmer's Market and then a beach picnic breakfast.  Take care. Stay warm and healthy.  Merry Christmas!

 

Cologuard Results, Fiber Installed, "RSVPlease"

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

12/16/23

 

Aloha Family ---

 

I finally got the results of my Cologuard test this week, and my poop passed with flying colors! In the report's words,  "Cologuard did not find blood or abnormal DNA in your sample...You're unlikely to have colon cancer...The chance that a person with a negative Cologuard test has a colorectal cancer is less than 1 in 1500 (negative predictive value >99.9%) or has an advanced adenoma is less than 5.3% (negative predictive value 94.7%)."  Whoopee!  Next test is recommended in three years.  If anything was missed this time around, two negatives would be very, very unlikely.

 

We got our Hawaiian Tel fiber internet service installed this week in a two-step process.  On Monday a crew showed up to run the cable from the street to the box on the side of our garage where the old land

line used to be.  There were actually three old lines that were legacies from the olden days of wired phones.  They removed those and coiled up a bunch of the new cable in the box.  The fiber optic cable is remarkably thin and light weight.  I had the guys strip back the insulation to reveal the actual information-carrying core -- a tiny hair-thin strand of clear plastic.  Incredible.  On Thursday another guy arrived to install the actual equipment and activate the line.  Because of my advanced planning this took less than an hour and went very, very smoothly.  The main piece of the setup is a small white box about the size of a business letter and as thick as a paperback book.  The fiber light signal goes in and digital info comes out, thanks to many little digi-fairies inside.  From there the signal runs to our router and is distributed throughout the house.  I simply unplugged my Spectrum cable service from the router and plugged in my CAT6 to the new equipment in the garage, and in about 30 seconds I had made the switch, getting 4x the speed for less money.  Very happy at the moment.  Yesterday I called to cancel my Spectrum internet service.  They immediately offered to match the Hawaiian Telcom price and increase my speed, but I told them they were a day late -- I already made the switch.  They did, however, let me keep my mobile phone plan, so I'm I'm definitely a happy camper.

No golf this week but we did manage to go to the driving range and practice putting green on Thursday

Santa's Outrigger Comes to Town

after the cable installation.  These are rather different than at most courses, I'm sure.  The practice areas at Makalei are halfway up the mountain, so you have to have a cart.  The driving range is down slope with a fantastic view of the ocean, framed by tall trees.  In other words, it's a nice outing even if you don't play a round.  We had beautiful clear weather, but honking wind.  Like St. Andrews, but 40 degrees warmer and no rain.  I did pretty good, certainly much better than last week when I couldn't seem to hit the ball.  Hopefully some of this will carry over to the next time I play, probably next week.  

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the latest challenge to fulfilling my bucket list visit to Ethiopia.  The judge rejected my written request to be excused!  I got a call on Wednesday telling me the news, and that I must report on January 5th (7 days before we're scheduled to leave) "for the drawing of names for the upcoming Grand Jury."  I'm hoping that somewhere along the line I'll be able to get excused on the grounds of pre-aranged travel that will be a financial hardship to cancel.  Maybe my name won't even get drawn, which would be great.  One positive to this:  I will get paid $30!!

Finally, later this morning Karen and I will get our RSV vaccinations.  I'm particularly motivated to get this because of my Emphysema, which would make any respiratory problems much worse.  It's likely I'll have a similar reaction to this vaccine as I have to others, hopefully only lasting a few days.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Ok, that's it for this week. Take care.  Beware of false moral equivalencies.  Stay warm.

Switch to Fiber, Golf Jinx, Grand Jury Duty?

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

12/9/23

 

Aloha All ---

 

Well, my timing for getting my cables run to handle fiber optic service turned out to be excellent!  This week Spectrum raised our rate by 25%.  I called to complain and didn't get anywhere -- they wouldn't match the price I can get for a year or more with Hawaiian Telcom's promotional rate, and Spectrum would still be higher than HT even when my fiber service increases after the introductory period. So, I then contacted Hawaiian Telcom and got more details on their fiber optic service, and went ahead and ordered it. The installation is scheduled for next Thursday.  Should be interesting. I'll wait to cancel Spectrum until I'm sure everything is working ok with the fiber service, but this time next week I should have faster internet at a lower cost.  With my new cable set up all it will take for me is to unplug the modem cable from our router and plug in the new cable I ran to where the ONT (Optical Network Terminal) will be located in the garage.  Fingers crossed.

My bragging about doing so well at golf has come back to bite me.  This week Karen, our friend, and I

Grrrrr!

played on Tuesday.  It was a gorgeous day.  The course was beautiful.  We saw lots of peacocks and nesting Nenes.  I played really, really, badly.  For some reason I just couldn't seem to hit the ball!!  After 11 holes of exhausting frustration we called it a day.  Karen and our friend were also having a bad day, possibly due my negative influence.  I hope it was just a matter of sore muscles and stiffness from being a troll in our crawl space for a good part of the previous couple of days.  Anyway, I'll certainly give it another try next week.  If I do well, though, I'm keeping my mouth shut.

Speaking of jinxes, the latest obstacle to my bucket list attempt to finally visit Ethiopia came this week in the mail -- a letter from the Circuit Court appointing me to the Grand Jury for 2024.  I would ordinarily be interested in this duty -- it involves deciding whether cases have enough evidence to go to court.  However, it entails being on call the entire year, including, of course, the time we are scheduled to be in Ethiopia and Kenya.  In the fine print of the letter it says that you can be excused on the basis of previously arranged and paid travel plans.  So I've crafted a letter explaining our arrangements, and enclosed a copy of our flight itinerary.  Hopefully this will get me out of  it.  I'll certainly let you know.!

Ok, we're off to market and our beach breakfast picnic.  Take care.  Be nice to your AI -- hopefully it will then be nice to you.

Wordle in 8, Kona Low, Cable Guy

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

12/2/23

 

Aloha Everybody ---

 

Well, I jinxed myself with all that talk about solving Wordle in 1 or 2 guesses.  This week I went to the other extreme and after my 6th guess there were still at least 2 possible words, so on the basis of my lousy luck up to that point I gave myself a score of 8!  My strategy was good -- identify the obvious possibilities and then make a guess that eliminates as many as possible.  For example, a bunch of words might end in "-ly" and another large group might end in "-te," making your best strategic guess one would remove one or the other set of words and also eliminate as many other letters as possible.  Right.  Good strategy. Except it didn't work this time.  The letters and their positions in my guesses just didn't help narrow down the list enough.  Oh well, I expect my memory will follow the Las Vegas model and dim the losses more than the gains and I'll still keep trying to win.....

Karen and I played golf on Tuesday with our friend and the weather was gorgeous.  No turkeys, by the way, but we did see lots of peacocks and nenes.  I got one par and a couple of bogeys, and this time my overall playing was more consistent from hole to hole -- not great but not overwhelmingly frustrating, either.  I hope I'm not jinxing things again.

Mauna Kea

It was a good thing we chose Tuesday for our golf outing, because overnight we experienced a weather pattern called a "Kona Low," something that in winter is caused by a dip in the jet stream that picks up moisture from the tropics and carries it westward across the islands, continuing on to the west coast of North America. This shifts our wind from the usual trade wind direction of northeast to southwest and makes our side of island suddenly the target of weather patterns rather than the Hilo side.  In this case the Kona Low brought up a huge amount of moisture and some strong winds.  Wednesday and Thursday were rainy all day with occasional scary wind blasts, and over those two days my rain gauge recorded 3".  Also, Mauna Kea got its first snow of the season. Things were a bit better yesterday and today is close to normal.  Imagine -- 3 days of crappy weather!!  We hunkered down and whimpered.

Despite the bad weather (or maybe because of it) I made good progress on my cabling project.  I got all the cables tacked up under the house and brought up through the walls to their proper location.  The coaxial connectors were the easiest to put on, and they work!!  The cat6 connectors, on the other hand are a different story.  They require the precise positioning of 8 fine wires into the connector at the same time.  It took some practice, a lot of patience, my extra strong pair of reading glasses, and a few botched attempts to finally get them on.  If the tester shows one or more wires isn't carrying a signal, then you have to cut off one or more of the connectors and start over.  Needless to say I was *very* happy when all the lights on the tester turned green!  The new cat6 capability means I accomplished the project's goal of making us fiber-ready in case I have a falling out with Spectrum Cable. All I have left now is to do some cleaning and tidying up, though I may decide to run a few more cat6 cables to replace my older cat5.  I've got plenty of leftover cable and now that putting on the connectors is part of my cable guy skill set, why not?

I managed to get a few decorations up but no lights yet.  Barring interference from the weather, I should be able to get more stuff up this weekend and next week we might even get out our artificial tree.  In other words, I'm inching closer to the Holiday spirit. It sure is hard to get the warm and fuzzies, though, when you look at the domestic and international news.  Is it possible to resign from the human race?

Off to market and our beach breakfast picnic.  Take care.  Careful with that snow shovel!